This Sharps sporting rifle, a .44 caliber percussion piece,
was made especially for John Brown, and bears no makers
mark or number. Brown carried this weapon on his Kansas
campaign in 1856 and later presented it to Charles Blair
of Collinsville, Connecticut. Blair was the forgemaster
with whom Brown had contracted in 1857 to make pikes for
the clandestine slave insurrection he was planning for
Virginia.

Division of the History of Technology, Armed Forces
History
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Behring Center